What is the Undergraduate Fellowship in the Digital Humanities?

The UFDH program seeks to promote the exploration and use of digital humanities (DH) tools and formats and support undergraduate students who want to conduct humanities research that integrates innovative digital tools and methods. As part of the fellowship, undergraduate fellows learn about DH methods, including digital storytelling, information visualization, mapping, and text analysis. The program culminates in the fellows producing a digital humanities project prototype focused on their interests. Topics range from local histories, community stories, and digital media culture to medical humanities, environmental humanities, and the intersections between the arts/creative works.

Students interested in learning about a range of digital humanities research skills and prototyping their own digital project are encouraged to apply!  

Check out the Digital Humanities Guide to learn more about DH theory and practice and for an overview of DH methods, tools, and resources!

2025 Program Details

Selected students will receive a fellowship to participate in workshops, conduct research, and design a digital project. Fellows are required to have a UCI faculty mentor, and are also paired with a mentor in the UCI Libraries, who will help them think through the integration of technology and research based on the skill sets most suited to their project. At the end of the fellowship period, students will present their work in a showcase.

Fellowship Period: The 2025 program will kick off at the end of spring and run through fall quarter and consists of:

• Spring Kickoff Meeting (in person)

• Late Summer Accelerator  (4 virtual sessions)

• Fall Quarter Project Development (independent work time with regular check-ins)

• Culminating Poster Showcase (in person)

Eligibility: Current, continuing UCI undergraduate students enrolled in a Humanities major.

Application: Submit the UFDH application here. Students must have a UCI faculty mentor who will endorse the application and be available to act as an informal mentor for the project during fall quarter 2025.

Application Deadline: Monday, May 12, 2025

Additional Questions? Contact humcareerdevelopment@uci.edu 

Learn more about previous projects below!

Josh Chan, 2023 Program Participant
		I was inspired to pursue this project because of my personal relationship to the subject and it gave me an opportunity to explore narratives and questions from the field of humanities that I have been interested in for the last few years. This program has equipped me with new tools to help me better engage with the humanities, specifically in regard to efficient research techniques and new ways of presenting research narratives. Going forward, the lessons I have taken away from this program will prove to be a solid foundation as I further explore humanities research and telling cultural stories. I believe this opportunity would prove to be invariably beneficial for all students who participate as it not only enables them to pursue topics they are interested in that might not be covered in the classroom but will also help them expand their view on a field that has, more likely than not, been presented in a narrow fashion for much of their life.

Program History

2022
The inaugural program in 2022 was sponsored by a generous donation to UC Irvine's School of Humanities, and co-directed by Professors Deanna Shemek and Yong Chen and Research Librarian for Digital Humanities, History, and African American Studies, Tatiana Bryant. The four inaugural fellows were:

Dee Richards, English major
Topic: The Mark of the Minotaur Twitterbot

Jonathan Ripetoe, English major
Topic: Double Consciousness Twitter Data Visualization

Rehana Morita, Film & Media Studies and Asian American Studies major
Topic: Undocumented Students of UCI Podcast

Ruth Belay,  African American Studies major
Topic: Black Student Activism at UCI Oral History Collection

2023
The 2nd annual UC Irvine Undergraduate Summer Fellowship in the Digital Humanities was generously sponsored by a donation to UCI's School of Humanities and was co-directed by Deanna Shemek, Yong Chen, and Madelynn Dickerson, Head of Digital Scholarship Services at UCI Libraries. In 2023, two undergraduate students in the School of Humanities had the opportunity to learn about digital humanities tools and research methods, develop a hypothetical project plan, and then build a prototype sample. The two fellows were:

Josh Chan, English major
Topic: Explored the culture and history of Japanese Americans in Hawaii through Shirokiya, a local grocery store

Jennellee Samkhem, Comparative Literature major
Topic: Studied Cambodian music with a focus on pop music during the wartime period.

2024
The 3rd annual USFDH was generously sponsored by a donation to UCI's School of Humanities and was co-directed by Professor Braxton Soderman, Professor Yong Chen, and the UCI Libraries. In 2024, eight undergraduate students in the School of Humanities explored a wide range of topics and approaches and the program culminated in the first annual Digital Humanities Student Fellows Showcase!

Learn more about the 2024 USFDH fellows' research:

Corinna Siu Mun Lee Chin, Literary Journalism major
Topic: Tracing Egg Foo Young within Books and Articles on Chinese American Cuisine

Gisele Valdovinos, History and Education Sciences major
Topic: Life in the Fields: The Lives of Imperial Valley Farm Workers During the Emergence of the UFW

Sebastián Calderón, History major
Topic: The Yost Theater Project: A Cultural Hub for Latinos in Orange County, California

Ariana Vargas, English and Asian American Studies major
Topic: Transnational Perspectives: Filipino American Political Art, 1972-1986

Adilene Garcia Hernandez, History major
Topic: Legacies of the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill: A Catalyst for Environmental Consciousness

Lily Victoria Amidon, History and Gender & Sexuality Studies major
Topic: Built on Hope: The Feminist Star Wars Project

Sissi Kang, Art History and Comparative Literature major
Topic: Vision Through Films: Women's Internalization of a Surveyor Male under Men's Promise of Power